rené
bertholo
um argentino no deserto
_sirr002
"The
results are striking, and quite unlike
anything I've ever heard.
Bizarre rhythms, sharp textures and
tones, unexpected turns and sound
samples often filtered beyond a state
of recognition populate these 18
tracks documenting Bertholo's unique
"Mosikal" vision. Most of the tracks
are short (with the exception of the
closing track "Fado do mar"), exploring
their own peculiar vignettes or their
own rhythmic or a-rhythmic sound
patterns, often ending abruptly and
in midstream. Let Um Argentino no
Deserto reassure you that the spirit
of innovation and experimentation in
electronic music is indeed alive and
well. This CD is an incredible document
that comes highly recommended".
Richard di Santo, Incursion Music
"Imagine an entire sound realm interpreted
by someone shut away from the
world of the jingle and the commercial
and who had never heard electronic
music before but wanted to design and
build machines to produce a kind of
new music. Rene Bertholo's vision is
that kind of sound world distilled in
a
microcosm. He started to build his own
instruments close to 30 years ago,
recorded the results and those results
are extraordinary. What's immediately
transparent is that alienation and primitive
emotion is the oxygen of this
sphere.? Rhythms limp towards the horizon;
you want to help them on their
way but can't. Fledgling percussion
taps nearly but not quite in sync, as
though almost? weary from the effort.
Blips bleep and chime joyously, but
this is not a sound world inhabited
by the Noton regulars: these are the
noises of birds and other animals patched
up to a generator resembling
something from Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
Um Argentino no Deserto is the type
of music that Russolo and the other
Futurists dreamed of when they first
hit
upon their manifestos but never quite
realised in earnest. It is a fragile
and seemingly temporary music. And it
is also timeless. This is the true
sequenced language of machines and an
incredible roadmap of years of
artistic endeavour, with no recourse
to recognisable signposts along the
way. Truly innovative and the one recording
in recent times to leave me
virtually speechless."
Brian Lavelle, in "Vital Weekly" 257
"Bertholo, a respected Portuguese visual
artist, after decades of
experimenting with moving parts both
aural and visual, releases his first
collection of sounds. Bertholo made
metal sculptures with electrical
movement all through the sixties, and
around 1973 was inspired to build his
own music-making machine, an electronic
version of a music box he called a
'makina'. Basically it was a simple
synthesizer with a very limited range.
Bertholo specifically wanted to avoid
making sounds like other(conventional)
instruments, and instead wound up with
rough croaks and tweets derived from
nature sounds -- albeit nature as built
from wire and cardboard. He then put
his 'makina' in multi-speaker installations
where the sounds could travel
and/or interact. The music here isY´
reminiscent of a neanderthal Optigan,
mechanizations moving in oblique loops,
collisions of phase, with snagged,
rough textures that I can compare to
no other artist. His work is like an
extreme simplification of Raymond Scott
or Oskar Sala's electronic machine
music, set upon by a gang of thugs with
tire irons, barbed wire and
fishhooks. I want to cradle these little
scarred rhythms in my arms."
Robin Edgerton, Othermusic
"Grabado directamente de esa máquina,
"Um Argentino no Deserto", recoge
veinte años de su inclasificable
aunque interesante producción
sonora."
Arsonal
"Riallacciandosi alla grande tradizione
degli scultori sonori, che da
Tinguely arriva fino a Bastien (e oltre),
il nostro costruisce delle
complicate macchine musicali in grado
di gestire mnemoniche risonanze di
singolare trasversalità timbrica.
"Um Argentino no Deserto" raccoglie
una
serie di composizioni realizzate con
tali assemblaggi meccanico-elettronici
tra il 1988 e il 1999 (qua e là
l'intrusione, più o meno involontaria,
di
voci, marimbas e synth), inanellando
inusuali paesaggi di ossessivo
minimalismo ("Já Foi"), leggeri
dondolii automatici ("Chop Suey"), robotiche
interazioni ritmiche ("Amanhã")
e molto altro ancora fino alla maliarda
conclusione di "Fadodo Mar". Antiquariato
acustico nell'era del laptop:
mecanique c'est la musique! "
Nicola Catalano, BLOWUP magazine
